#FOSDEM

🆕 blog! “OpenBenches at FOSDEM”

At the recent FOSDEM, I did a very quick lightning talk about our OpenBenches project.

Sadly, despite the best efforts of the AV team, the video had a missing section. I took my own audio recording and zipkid took some photos, so I was able to recreate it using the Flowblade video editor.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to Edward Betts for running the dev room and…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/02/openbenches-at-fosdem/
⸻
#fosdem #OpenBenches

The recordings of our #FOSDEM talks are both released by now :)

Saturday's talk about #autocrypt2:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/TV7GCC-autocrypt_2_post-quantum-cryptography_and_reliable_deletion_forward-secrecy/

Sunday's talk about the #multirelay future:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/3F9VTU-deltachat-chatmail-relays-multi-transport/
#DeltaChat #Chatmail

@django @evan @liaizon

Hey, this is great. It is so nice to see the uptick of interest in the #C2S part of #ActivityPub. Very uplifting and gives me hope for the future of #fediverse.

I really liked your #FOSDEM presentation, and thank you for mentioning my humble list. They are just notes atm, but I will try to keep them up-to-date. I just made a bunch of updates..

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/delightful-fediverse-experience/issues/130

Would love to hear more on what are the particular plans and goals for your project in the near future?

@django @evan @liaizon

PS. For people who haven't seen it yet, the #FOSDEM presentation is at:

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

@django @evan @liaizon

Hey, this is great. It is so nice to see the uptick of interest in the #C2S part of #ActivityPub. Very uplifting and gives me hope for the future of #fediverse.

I really liked your #FOSDEM presentation, and thank you for mentioning my humble list. They are just notes atm, but I will try to keep them up-to-date. I just made a bunch of updates..

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/delightful-fediverse-experience/issues/130

Would love to hear more on what are the particular plans and goals for your project in the near future?

@virtualpierogi @sri @jsalvador @ben

Unfortunately there's a new threat, and it was addressed in the #FOSDEM keynote speech by @michiel of @nlnet .. and that is the mad dash to incorporate #AI into everything and vibe-code stuff together in a heartbeat.

I think this is particular bad for the fediverse #SocialWeb still lacking its robust foundations. The #LLM's will have no problem figuring out how to mix'n mash the existing protocol decay and tech debt into new applications that are rushed into production. Finally non-protocol-experts are enable on the ecosystem and can onboard themselves without involving themselves in endless plumbing of the most low-level technical implemention details of #ActivityPub devs.

But the ecosystem will rot and decay as a result of it. Furthermore if a slew of AI-generated fedi apps are launched in quick succession and some of them find good uptake (until they break in unexpected ways), it will serve to attract unwanted corporate attention I'm afraid.

Btw, this is a good opportunity to once more thank @nlnet for their years-long hard work and support of the social web, and the fediverse in particular. I counted 86 fine social web R&D projects who have received @NGIZero and other @ngi support from the #EU over the past couple of years.

At the bottom of the article I mention the urgent #FOSDEM talk and call-to-action by @michiel and also the 2019 keynote given by @darius at the #ActivityPub Conference in Prague on "How to play and win our own game" independent of #BigTech and corporate hypercapitalist shenanigans.

@ben

Next year, #FOSDEM will be IPv6 only.

So Github will break, as it is IPv4 only (unless they get their act together).

@T_X @axx so for #FOSDEM 2027, I had another stupid idea everyone insisted was good: it will be #IPv6-only on the main network. The dual stack will get a yearly name change to prevent auto-reconnect. We want people on v6-only and break stuff left and right. Every. Single. Year.

And if #GitHub is not on v6 by next year, trust me, they will put _something_ in place very quickly.

@tschaefer @T_X @axx rumor has it, #GitHub saw my #FOSDEM announcement. Including the helpful offer to CNAME to #codeberg which supports #IPv6

@T_X @axx so for #FOSDEM 2027, I had another stupid idea everyone insisted was good: it will be #IPv6-only on the main network. The dual stack will get a yearly name change to prevent auto-reconnect. We want people on v6-only and break stuff left and right. Every. Single. Year.

And if #GitHub is not on v6 by next year, trust me, they will put _something_ in place very quickly.

@T_X @axx I made the switch to #NAT64-only on the default network of #FOSDEM 13(?) years ago. It broke So. Much. Stuff.

I knew the former maintainer of the network tooling from the Linux Kernel Summit, and ran into him by chance that year. #Ubuntu was completely broken on NAT64-only, it did not even bring up the network interfaces, and we sent people who came to the NOC to their booth.

I also sent that former maintainer over there.

They fixed things very quickly.

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

Hey, #hachyderm --

We totally forgot to publish the availability of the `hachyderm.general` #ansible collection we announced at #fosdem a few weeks ago!

We started by publishing our #postgresql roles that we use to keep the Hachyderm database servers happy and healthy. Included are modules to:

- build postgresql servers in both primary and replica configurations
- configure pgbackrest for full and incremental backups
- publish metrics for consumption by prometheus

Modules are available on Ansible Galaxy at https://galaxy.ansible.com/ui/repo/published/hachyderm/general/.

Happy Hachyderming (and Ansible-ing and postgresql-ing)!

Hey, #hachyderm --

We totally forgot to publish the availability of the `hachyderm.general` #ansible collection we announced at #fosdem a few weeks ago!

We started by publishing our #postgresql roles that we use to keep the Hachyderm database servers happy and healthy. Included are modules to:

- build postgresql servers in both primary and replica configurations
- configure pgbackrest for full and incremental backups
- publish metrics for consumption by prometheus

Modules are available on Ansible Galaxy at https://galaxy.ansible.com/ui/repo/published/hachyderm/general/.

Happy Hachyderming (and Ansible-ing and postgresql-ing)!

The recordings of our #FOSDEM talks are both released by now :)

Saturday's talk about #autocrypt2:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/TV7GCC-autocrypt_2_post-quantum-cryptography_and_reliable_deletion_forward-secrecy/

Sunday's talk about the #multirelay future:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/3F9VTU-deltachat-chatmail-relays-multi-transport/
#DeltaChat #Chatmail

I don’t usually review hardware publicly but my personal #FOSDEM highlight forced my hand. I checked out the mecha comet meetup, and all I can say is: This thing is exceptionally well‑designed. Multiple iterations and each one smarter than the last. #comet #mechaComet

During #FOSDEM I rediscovered #MechaComet. Cool #Linux 🐧 #handheld! It is currently running a #Kickstarter. So grab yours, while you can and if you want to know why I am so excited about it, check my blog 😉 https://michal.hrusecky.net/2026/02/mecha-comet/

I don’t usually review hardware publicly but my personal #FOSDEM highlight forced my hand. I checked out the mecha comet meetup, and all I can say is: This thing is exceptionally well‑designed. Multiple iterations and each one smarter than the last. #comet #mechaComet

Another #cool #hardware gadget I got to try toady on #FOSDEM - #MechaComet! Feels amazing!

A fantastic post by @sturmsucht about his first #FOSDEM. Beautifully written, with amazing photos to accompany the article.

Thank you for the mention and for the kind words, Chris! Likewise, it was great to finally meet you IRL ❤️
https://blog.sturmsucht.de/my-first-fosdem/

Thank you again, @_elena and @sturmsucht

You two made #FOSDEM better because of your work!

The GPIO extension is one of our absolute favorites!

Direct access to the underlying 40 GPIOs and DIY ready.

More details here: https://developers.mecha.so/docs/extensions/io-breakout

This picture is from our booth at #FOSDEM 🌟

Another #cool #hardware gadget I got to try toady on #FOSDEM - #MechaComet! Feels amazing!

I don’t usually review hardware publicly but my personal #FOSDEM highlight forced my hand. I checked out the mecha comet meetup, and all I can say is: This thing is exceptionally well‑designed. Multiple iterations and each one smarter than the last. #comet #mechaComet

📸 8: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @benpate of Emissary, who gave the inspiring final talk of the day

video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/CP7KWX-emissary-and-the-fediverse.mp4

@zev333 to expand on the #FOSDEM ask: all this happens through a web Interface. You don't need to download or install anything, just open a link, watch a few minutes of video, click a few buttons, done

The cost of running OpenBenches.org

After my recent presentation at FOSDEM, someone asked a pretty reasonable question. What does it cost to run OpenBenches?

It is, thankfully, surprisingly cheap! In part, that's because it is a relatively simple tech stack - PHP, MySQL, a couple of API calls to external services. It was designed to be as low cost while also being useful. Here's the breakdown:

Hosting - £171 per year

Our biggest expense but, I think, our most reasonable. Krystal charges around £342 for a 2 year contract. That includes unlimited bandwidth and storage, as well as the domain name. We have nearly 400GB of photos and bot scraping means we can use over 900GB of bandwidth per month - so Krystal give us a rather good deal!

Use this affiliate link and code EDENT to get a small discount.

Stadia Maps - US$20 / month

Geocoding is surprisingly hard to do locally. We need to transform latitude and longitude into addresses, and then back again. Stadia Maps cost about the same as our hosting! What's rather annoying is that we only use about half the API calls in our plan. We need to find a cheaper solution.

Mapping - Free!

When we used Stadia for drawing maps, we regularly ran over our quota. So we switched to OpenFreeMap which produces gorgeous interactive maps.

The service has been rock solid and very responsive to bugs on GitHub.

Logo - US$5

I'm not a good designer, so we bought a logo from The Noun Project and then coloured it in. Bargain for a fiver!

Image CDN - Free!

Although we have unlimited bandwidth with Krystal, we're only located in one region - the UK. WeServ. It's also pointless serving full resolution images to small screens.

So WeServ offers free image resizing and global CDNs. Personally, I'm not a fan of CloudFlare (their CDN partner) so I'm looking to change provider.

OCR - Free!

People don't want to type in the inscription of the photo, so we use Google Cloud Vision.

We send less than 1,000 requests per month - so we're inside their free tier. If we get more popular, that'll get more expensive. But I don't know of a local-first OCR which is as good as Google's. Sadly, Tesseract is rubbish for extracting text from photos.

Authentication - Free!

We don't want to store anyone's passwords. The free tier of Auth0 allows us to do social login for up to 25,000 monthly users. Which is more than enough for us.

Sadly, Auth0 don't support the Fediverse, so I had to build my own "Log-in with Mastodon" service.

As much as we'd like to run social login locally, we simply don't want to be responsible for securing users' details & API keys.

Software - Free!

As per the OpenBenches colophon we use a lot of cool FOSS. Small JS libraries, big PHP frameworks, and everything in between.

Income

Thanks to GitHub Sponsors we make a whopping US$3 per month!

Similarly, our OpenCollective Sponsors brings in about £3 per month.

Merchandising! You can buy OpenBenches branded t-shirts, mugs, and hats. That nets us about £20 per year

Call it roughly £80 income. OK, it is better than nothing - but doesn't even cover a quarter of our costs. Sometimes people give us a higher donation privately, which is also very welcome. These people are listed on our README.

Total

On the assumption that our time is worthless (ha!) and that we only rarely go over our providers' API limits, and we get in some revenue, the cost of running OpenBenches is less than £300 per year.

That's not bad for a fun little hobby. People certainly spend more than that on Funkopops, vaping, and mechanical keyboards!

Nevertheless, I'm always slightly worried that we'll go viral and have an unexpectedly high bill from our API providers.

I would love to be able to hire a proper designer to make the site look a bit nicer. I also want to be able to buy a modern iPhone so that I can test it in the latest Safari.

If you have any suggestions for cutting costs, or non-scummy ways to help us raise funds, please drop a comment below.

#FOSDEM ask: if you are willing to help review and cut videos, please reach out to myself or @zev333

(Using my account for "more followers, more distribution" reasons)

Happy #ilovefs #ilovefreesoftwareday!

Switching to #opensource is the best thing you can gift your organization, your colleagues, your users, and us, the citizens.

This is a hard work, but necessary work. You're not just migrating software - you're building democracy and freedom for future generations.

In case you would like to learn more about leading change from closed source to #FOSS, I shared my best practices recently with the audience at #fosdem https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/7YMJST-how-to-lead-change-to-open-source/

Reminder: ich bin heute leider auf dem Post Mortem zur #FOSDEM und kann deswegen nicht in #München #pruef #prüf en gehen.

Nehmt wen mit und helft meinen Platz zu besetzen.

Dankeschön!

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

Wanted to see me speak at #FOSDEM but couldn't make it? Here's the two talks I gave!

How to Level Up the Fediverse
(co-presented with ActivityPub co-author @tsyesika !) https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HVJRNV-how_to_level_up_the_fediverse/

Lisp is Clay: the Power of Composable DSLs https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HDE7JZ-lisp-is-clay/

Can't get enough? Need more #spritely talks? We gave a bunch... 🧵

For some background, you can watch the talk @zormit and @blinry gave at #FOSDEM:

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/CQHN8T-teamtype-towards-a-collaborative-editing-protocol/

We'd especially love your input if you already have experience standardizing protocols, to point us towards best practices!

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

We've just published a blog post about our time at #FOSDEM this year, in case you missed out - there's plenty to catch up on, from the session recordings.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/fosdem-2026-recap/

Here are some other #FOSDEM talks I recommend:

Wastrel: WebAssembly Without the Runtime by @wingo (Wastrel uses #Spritely Hoot!) https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HT9HAG-wastrel-webassembly-without-the-runtime/

Willow - Protocols for an uncertain future (wins "Christine's award for most charming presentation") by @gwil https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/CVGZAV-willow/

Automerge + Keyhive Design Overview by @expede https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/BZ9CAE-automerge/

BLUE - A generic build-system crafted entirely in Guile by @shepherd https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/3A7VGM-blue/

raylib: a 12-year adventure as a solo-maintainer https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/883PBF-raylib-12-year-adventure/

Too many other good talks to list of course (and I haven't gotten through all of them) but all of the above talks totally rule

Here are some other #FOSDEM talks I recommend:

Wastrel: WebAssembly Without the Runtime by @wingo (Wastrel uses #Spritely Hoot!) https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HT9HAG-wastrel-webassembly-without-the-runtime/

Willow - Protocols for an uncertain future (wins "Christine's award for most charming presentation") by @gwil https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/CVGZAV-willow/

Automerge + Keyhive Design Overview by @expede https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/BZ9CAE-automerge/

BLUE - A generic build-system crafted entirely in Guile by @shepherd https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/3A7VGM-blue/

raylib: a 12-year adventure as a solo-maintainer https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/883PBF-raylib-12-year-adventure/

Too many other good talks to list of course (and I haven't gotten through all of them) but all of the above talks totally rule

Still more #spritely talks at #FOSDEM by @dthompson :

Functional reactive programming with propagators https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/9NQYKC-funcpropagators/

Beyond JavaScript: Wasm GC present and future https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/G3FRDA-beyond_javascript_wasm_gc_present_and_future/

Re-decentralizing the web platform with Wasm GC https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/GB387H-re-decentralizing_the_web_platform_with_wasm_gc/

Composing capability security and CRDTs https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/SXSAML-brassica-chat-with-goblins-ocapn/

What's that? STILL not enough? ...

More #spritely talks at #FOSDEM by @tsyesika :

Guile Development Outside of Emacs https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/EKEFUU-guileoutsideofemacs/

OCapN: The secure, decentralized protocol of the future https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QPUXCQ-ocapn_the_secure_decentralized_protocol_of_the_future/

And yet, that's not all...

Here are some other #FOSDEM talks I recommend:

Wastrel: WebAssembly Without the Runtime by @wingo (Wastrel uses #Spritely Hoot!) https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HT9HAG-wastrel-webassembly-without-the-runtime/

Willow - Protocols for an uncertain future (wins "Christine's award for most charming presentation") by @gwil https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/CVGZAV-willow/

Automerge + Keyhive Design Overview by @expede https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/BZ9CAE-automerge/

BLUE - A generic build-system crafted entirely in Guile by @shepherd https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/3A7VGM-blue/

raylib: a 12-year adventure as a solo-maintainer https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/883PBF-raylib-12-year-adventure/

Too many other good talks to list of course (and I haven't gotten through all of them) but all of the above talks totally rule

Still more #spritely talks at #FOSDEM by @dthompson :

Functional reactive programming with propagators https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/9NQYKC-funcpropagators/

Beyond JavaScript: Wasm GC present and future https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/G3FRDA-beyond_javascript_wasm_gc_present_and_future/

Re-decentralizing the web platform with Wasm GC https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/GB387H-re-decentralizing_the_web_platform_with_wasm_gc/

Composing capability security and CRDTs https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/SXSAML-brassica-chat-with-goblins-ocapn/

What's that? STILL not enough? ...

More #spritely talks at #FOSDEM by @tsyesika :

Guile Development Outside of Emacs https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/EKEFUU-guileoutsideofemacs/

OCapN: The secure, decentralized protocol of the future https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QPUXCQ-ocapn_the_secure_decentralized_protocol_of_the_future/

And yet, that's not all...

Wanted to see me speak at #FOSDEM but couldn't make it? Here's the two talks I gave!

How to Level Up the Fediverse
(co-presented with ActivityPub co-author @tsyesika !) https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HVJRNV-how_to_level_up_the_fediverse/

Lisp is Clay: the Power of Composable DSLs https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HDE7JZ-lisp-is-clay/

Can't get enough? Need more #spritely talks? We gave a bunch... 🧵

Wanted to see me speak at #FOSDEM but couldn't make it? Here's the two talks I gave!

How to Level Up the Fediverse
(co-presented with ActivityPub co-author @tsyesika !) https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HVJRNV-how_to_level_up_the_fediverse/

Lisp is Clay: the Power of Composable DSLs https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HDE7JZ-lisp-is-clay/

Can't get enough? Need more #spritely talks? We gave a bunch... 🧵

I don’t usually review hardware publicly but my personal #FOSDEM highlight forced my hand. I checked out the mecha comet meetup, and all I can say is: This thing is exceptionally well‑designed. Multiple iterations and each one smarter than the last. #comet #mechaComet

@mapache such a good read, TY! Perhaps it’s my attention, perhaps how good your writing is (I am quite sure it’s the latter!), but I added your blog’s RSS feed to my reader before even finishing the post.

This resonates so much with me: getting to know my bunch of fellow hackers was so instrumental to my growth and, ultimately, my own identity.

I love #FOSDEM but now I hate that I missed you there... I wanted to talk riddles with you! But I’ll make up for it, oh I will! 😆

@osuosl is raising funds to cover critical extra expenses that incurred while moving and modernizing their data center.

They host and maintain not only our gitlab instance, but also a bunch of services for a long list of important free software projects, including @alpinelinux, @armbian, #busybox, @chimera, #Debian, @fdroidorg, @fedora, #ffmpeg, #fosdem, #freedesktoporg, #gcc, @gentoo, @gnome, @inkscape, @kde, #kodi, @LineageOS, the #linux kernel, @llvm, #openbsd, #qemu, @reproducible_builds, @rust, #tor, #vlc and many more:
https://osuosl.org/communities/

Consider donating to them or boosting this post if you want to help them out. Thank you!

Can recommend: “The Linux Phone App Ecosystem” by 1peter10 (@linmob)

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/VH3GYN-linux-phone-app-ecosystem-2026/

#fosdem #fosdem26 #sailfishos #phosh #ubuntutouch #gnomemobile

I know it's a long shot but if someone who sees this found their way to Mastodon through one of the leaflets we distributed at #FOSDEM, I want to hear from you--what did you think of the leaflet? I need to generalize those for other events.

I know it's a long shot but if someone who sees this found their way to Mastodon through one of the leaflets we distributed at #FOSDEM, I want to hear from you--what did you think of the leaflet? I need to generalize those for other events.

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

Another FOSDEM and hackathon are in the rear-view mirror, and it is hard to find words to describe how amazingly productive and fun the experience was! We met so many people at the postmarketOS stand, in the FOSS on Mobile devroom and at dinners in the evening. As always it is fun to put faces to nicknames and to talk about the Linux Mobile ecosystem, and figure out how to improve it in person.

Find photos and what we got done in the blog post:

https://postmarketos.org/blog/2026/02/10/fosdem-and-hackathon/

Thanks to all who came by or contributed towards making this possible!

#fosdem #linuxmobile #postmarketos

I know it's a long shot but if someone who sees this found their way to Mastodon through one of the leaflets we distributed at #FOSDEM, I want to hear from you--what did you think of the leaflet? I need to generalize those for other events.

@reiver

At #FOSDEM @evan presented tags.pub based on this idea..

https://github.com/social-web-foundation/tags.pub

I know it's a long shot but if someone who sees this found their way to Mastodon through one of the leaflets we distributed at #FOSDEM, I want to hear from you--what did you think of the leaflet? I need to generalize those for other events.

Here we go: @tbernard and @adz are at #fosdem to tell us their plan for a local first desktop, featuring @p2panda and Reflection (wich we fund in class 01).

Setting the stage: "2025 was the year everybody, even those who do not attend @fosdem, realized they are dependent on us tech. We have to organize strategically to change that!"

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

I know it's a long shot but if someone who sees this found their way to Mastodon through one of the leaflets we distributed at #FOSDEM, I want to hear from you--what did you think of the leaflet? I need to generalize those for other events.

I know it's a long shot but if someone who sees this found their way to Mastodon through one of the leaflets we distributed at #FOSDEM, I want to hear from you--what did you think of the leaflet? I need to generalize those for other events.

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

@fdroidorg haha, I didn't expect to make it to the newsletter when said "Thank you for existing" at #fosdem

📸 6: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @hongminhee of @fedify

video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/KSEUZT-fedify.mp4

I'm going through #fosdem 2026 videos and I need to point out the good work with the files themselves. We have the option of downloading .mp4 videos with older coded for old devices, but we have everything also encoded in modern av1 (using webm as container) which makes for very small files with good quality. I'm saving them directly to my jellyfin instance and watching one by one at my tv, popcorn in hand. Good job fosdem people!

Containers, cloud, blockchain, AI – it's all the same old BS, says veteran Red Hatter

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/08/waves_of_tech_bs/

After decades in the trenches, this engineer is done with hype cycles

<- by me on @theregister

#FOSDEM #CENTOSCONNECT

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

Someone at #FOSDEM asked us to put some promotional materials on our website that they could print for an event. There is now a section for that on the Branding page with our first poster:

https://joinmastodon.org/branding

During #FOSDEM I rediscovered #MechaComet. Cool #Linux 🐧 #handheld! It is currently running a #Kickstarter. So grab yours, while you can and if you want to know why I am so excited about it, check my blog 😉 https://michal.hrusecky.net/2026/02/mecha-comet/

Should #FOSDEM have a new hall for open source hardware, open culture art, etc traders? Lots of little bits and pieces being sold here and there but being able to browse wares would be cool.

RE: https://not-brain.d.on-t.work/notes/aihbpmkp1ecc81qe

Glad to get a reminder that @gwil's Willow presentation from #FOSDEM is up! This was a talk I tried to go to with @hongminhee and @2chanhaeng but we made it there right at the last 2 minutes cause it took too soo to find it in the maze of the campus.

Containers, cloud, blockchain, AI – it's all the same old BS, says veteran Red Hatter

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/08/waves_of_tech_bs/

After decades in the trenches, this engineer is done with hype cycles

<- by me on @theregister

#FOSDEM #CENTOSCONNECT

Hello, fediverse! We’re ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), a nonprofit that makes open source trust & safety infra tools.

https://roost.tools

We recently openly released Osprey, the automated rules engine and investigation tool used in production by Discord and Bluesky.

We were at FOSDEM. And now we’re finally here on Mastodon! 👋

You can continue to follow @roost.tools as a direct bridge from our Bluesky account, but we’ll post more specifically for the fediverse directly over here, now.

#TrustAndSafety #OpenSource #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026

Hello, fediverse! We’re ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), a nonprofit that makes open source trust & safety infra tools.

https://roost.tools

We recently openly released Osprey, the automated rules engine and investigation tool used in production by Discord and Bluesky.

We were at FOSDEM. And now we’re finally here on Mastodon! 👋

You can continue to follow @roost.tools as a direct bridge from our Bluesky account, but we’ll post more specifically for the fediverse directly over here, now.

#TrustAndSafety #OpenSource #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026

Hi @dyne,
💯 indeed society requires a #social #web populated with #emancipated #netizens! https://marcus.rohrmoser.name/talks/2025/offdem/slides.pdf #FOSDEM 2025 (last year)

Monitor Air Quality and FOSDEM:
- https://paul.walko.org/blog/2026_01_25-meshtastic-fosdem-part1.html
- https://paul.walko.org/blog/2026-02-07_fosdem-part2.html

#fosdem

📸 8: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @benpate of Emissary, who gave the inspiring final talk of the day

video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/CP7KWX-emissary-and-the-fediverse.mp4

📸 5: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @mapache during his presentation "Decentralised Badges with ActivityPub + OpenBadges – Building the interoperable credentialing system we deserve"

Thank you Maho for wearing #TheFutureIsFederated sweatshirt 💚

video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/JEMNBZ-decentralised-badges-activitypub-badgefed.mp4

📸 8: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @benpate of Emissary, who gave the inspiring final talk of the day

video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/CP7KWX-emissary-and-the-fediverse.mp4

just watched this #FOSDEM #OpenLocalFirst Devroom presentation about https://hyper.media; a new attempt at a p2p web protocol with reading/writing, archiving and web of trust as primitives
https://youtu.be/3gI7-h0wAE8

I hope you enjoyed some of my pics from #FOSDEM's Social Web track. I have many more but I don't want to overwhelm your feed with them.

I have seen the fantastic photos @sturmsucht has taken and I cannot wait for him to share them. Keep an eye out and follow him.

Wishing you all a fantastic weekend! I can't believe FOSDEM was a week ago already 🥲

I hope you enjoyed some of my pics from #FOSDEM's Social Web track. I have many more but I don't want to overwhelm your feed with them.

I have seen the fantastic photos @sturmsucht has taken and I cannot wait for him to share them. Keep an eye out and follow him.

Wishing you all a fantastic weekend! I can't believe FOSDEM was a week ago already 🥲

📸 7: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – Fra of @openforfuture with @magostinelli and @filippodb during their talk "Building a sustainable Italian Fediverse"

full video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/VKHGXT-building_a_sustainable_italian_fediverse_overcoming_technical_adoption_and_moder.mp4

📸 6: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @hongminhee of @fedify

video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/KSEUZT-fedify.mp4

📸 6: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @hongminhee of @fedify

video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/KSEUZT-fedify.mp4

📸 5: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @mapache during his presentation "Decentralised Badges with ActivityPub + OpenBadges – Building the interoperable credentialing system we deserve"

Thank you Maho for wearing #TheFutureIsFederated sweatshirt 💚

video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/JEMNBZ-decentralised-badges-activitypub-badgefed.mp4

📸 5: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @floppy during his talk "A wild FASP appears! Integrating your app with Fediverse Auxiliary Service Providers"

Full video: https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/M7DYRH-a-wild-fasp-appears.mp4

📸 4: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @cwebber and @tsyesika of https://spritely.institute/

📸 3: #FOSDEM Social Web devroom pics – @samvie of @offene_netzwerke

Watch the full video of her presentation "Building Social Advocacy Networks in and for Europe" here:

🔗 : https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h2215/RCV98B-the-social-web-and-digital-sovereignty.mp4

Hello, fediverse! We’re ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), a nonprofit that makes open source trust & safety infra tools.

https://roost.tools

We recently openly released Osprey, the automated rules engine and investigation tool used in production by Discord and Bluesky.

We were at FOSDEM. And now we’re finally here on Mastodon! 👋

You can continue to follow @roost.tools as a direct bridge from our Bluesky account, but we’ll post more specifically for the fediverse directly over here, now.

#TrustAndSafety #OpenSource #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026

#FOSDEM was a blast - Faces of Fosdem updated with the 2026 #portrait batch : https://toujoursdeja.fr/projects/faces-of-fosdem/2026.html <3 👋 h01ger Long live #opensource #fosdem2026

RE: https://mastodon.blaede.family/@cassidy/116026624253943199

We come back from FOSDEM and suddenly we’re on the fediverse! 😀

We really did have a great time talking to and sharing ideas with all of the folks across ALL of the decentralized and federated platforms and protocols.

#FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #OpenSource

Hello, fediverse! We’re ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), a nonprofit that makes open source trust & safety infra tools.

https://roost.tools

We recently openly released Osprey, the automated rules engine and investigation tool used in production by Discord and Bluesky.

We were at FOSDEM. And now we’re finally here on Mastodon! 👋

You can continue to follow @roost.tools as a direct bridge from our Bluesky account, but we’ll post more specifically for the fediverse directly over here, now.

#TrustAndSafety #OpenSource #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026

Hello, fediverse! We’re ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), a nonprofit that makes open source trust & safety infra tools.

https://roost.tools

We recently openly released Osprey, the automated rules engine and investigation tool used in production by Discord and Bluesky.

We were at FOSDEM. And now we’re finally here on Mastodon! 👋

You can continue to follow @roost.tools as a direct bridge from our Bluesky account, but we’ll post more specifically for the fediverse directly over here, now.

#TrustAndSafety #OpenSource #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026

RE: https://mastodon.blaede.family/@cassidy/116026624253943199

We come back from FOSDEM and suddenly we’re on the fediverse! 😀

We really did have a great time talking to and sharing ideas with all of the folks across ALL of the decentralized and federated platforms and protocols.

#FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #OpenSource

Hello, fediverse! We’re ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), a nonprofit that makes open source trust & safety infra tools.

https://roost.tools

We recently openly released Osprey, the automated rules engine and investigation tool used in production by Discord and Bluesky.

We were at FOSDEM. And now we’re finally here on Mastodon! 👋

You can continue to follow @roost.tools as a direct bridge from our Bluesky account, but we’ll post more specifically for the fediverse directly over here, now.

#TrustAndSafety #OpenSource #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026

I was fortunate present my thoughts at #FOSDEM 2026. I think it went pretty well... though a little rushed.

It's at least a good survey of where I think we as a community need to head, and how my work on #Emissary meets each of these needs

Key Points:
* Bring creators to the Fediverse (#OnlinePayments)
* Work together to operate like a single unit (#FEP3b86)
* Killer Features they can't copy (#DataPortability)
* Whatever YOU do, go make the Fediverse better

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/CP7KWX-emissary-and-the-fediverse/

🤘🏻

I’m back from FOSDEM! Here’s a little blog post about our first time attending as ROOST:

https://cassidyjames.com/blog/roost-osprey-fosdem-2026/

#TrustAndSafety #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #OpenSource

I’m back from FOSDEM! Here’s a little blog post about our first time attending as ROOST:

https://cassidyjames.com/blog/roost-osprey-fosdem-2026/

#TrustAndSafety #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #OpenSource

This year’s FOSDEM was a great success for our team, even stronger than last year. Read more. https://furilabs.com/fosdem-2026-recap/

#fosdem #furilabs #linuxonmobile #flx1s #thankyou

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

Why do we have such a gender imbalance at #fosdem & in tech in general?

A real conversation.

Marty: Maria, what do you think about ABC?
Peter: I don't want to speak for Maria, but... (keeps talking for a few minutes).
Anna: Thank you for sharing your perspective, Peter, but I would love to hear Maria's perspective.

If you observe someone dominating a discussion and answering questions that aren't directed at them, please be an ally and moderate the conversation in an inclusive way🧡
#dei #deib

It’s out!
The video of my FOSDEM 2026 talk on decentralised badges + ActivityPub (BadgeFed) is now online 👀

Check it out here:

https://video.fosdem.org/2026/h2215/JEMNBZ-decentralised-badges-activitypub-badgefed.av1.webm

Part of the Social Web track:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/social-web/

#FOSDEM #ActivityPub #Fediverse #BadgeFed

My #FOSDEM 2026 talk is out: @servo Streams reimplementation 🎥

Also, I was really happy to meet the Servo team in person at FOSDEM.

https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h1309/3J8GUD-servo-streams-reimplementation.mp4

Got my share of stickers from #FOSDEM, thank you Jordi!

Will put the PostmarketOS on the OSMC Vero2 TV-Box, as a riminder to hack/port it!

#thunderbird #postmarketos #openssl #osmc #vero2

Good morning Fedi friends,

I just finished selecting and color grading the photos I took this past weekend at #FOSDEM in the Social Web devroom.

There are some really nice ones of speakers and I look forward to sharing a few here...

But first: I wanna ask the speakers permission because... CONSENT.

So stay tuned 😊

Wishing everyone a great day!

Good morning Fedi friends,

I just finished selecting and color grading the photos I took this past weekend at #FOSDEM in the Social Web devroom.

There are some really nice ones of speakers and I look forward to sharing a few here...

But first: I wanna ask the speakers permission because... CONSENT.

So stay tuned 😊

Wishing everyone a great day!

This was a good look at what open source maintainers are having to put up with when when people use AI tools for reporting issues:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wYSwZ20NJU

Alternatively, on the @fosdem site: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/B7YKQ7-oss-in-spite-of-ai/

#FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #OpenSource

Hehe, I’m having way too much fun with this https://fossasia.org badge from @fosdem. How’s my tiny pixel art @roost.tools logo? 👀

#FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

Ein Event braucht mindestens Zeit und Ort. Und vor allem über „Location“ haben wir bei der #FOSDEM diskutiert. Wie definiert man einen Ort? Über Längen- und Breitengrad? Mit IDs in OpenStreetMap? Mit Namen? Haben Orte einen Umfang oder sind sie ein Punkt? Was ist mit Orten in Orten, wie z.B. Saal 118 im Trakt D des Campus Solbusch der Uni Brüssel. Oder: Raum FOSDEM?

@sl007 @clemensg habt ihr nicht auch mit einem Projekt an Geo-Daten in ActivityPub gearbeitet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieihyq3JbWs&t=7649s

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

Why do we have such a gender imbalance at #fosdem & in tech in general?

A real conversation.

Marty: Maria, what do you think about ABC?
Peter: I don't want to speak for Maria, but... (keeps talking for a few minutes).
Anna: Thank you for sharing your perspective, Peter, but I would love to hear Maria's perspective.

If you observe someone dominating a discussion and answering questions that aren't directed at them, please be an ally and moderate the conversation in an inclusive way🧡
#dei #deib

My fosdem talk is up!

I make a case for more platforms to support the ActivityPub client API, and how we should look beyond microblogging for future growth of the ‘verse

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/QK7XSV-activitypub-c2s/

#c2s #fosdem #fediverse #ActivityPub

"Evolving git for the next decade" by Patrick Steinhardt from #FOSDEM 2026 is a good one.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HTJK33-evolving_git_for_the_next_decade/

Skip’s @marcprux gave an excellent talk at #fosdem on the history and state of Swift on Android (without all the extras that Skip provides):

https://youtu.be/mZNIAuQ7s7k?si=gTnahvOHZp3_he1a

Good morning Fedi friends,

I just finished selecting and color grading the photos I took this past weekend at #FOSDEM in the Social Web devroom.

There are some really nice ones of speakers and I look forward to sharing a few here...

But first: I wanna ask the speakers permission because... CONSENT.

So stay tuned 😊

Wishing everyone a great day!

Slides from my #wayland input method presentation are up now!

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/MVVELP-wayland_input_method_wrap_up/

I'm impressed by the new activity on input methods! Is that the usual post-talk excitement, or will things switch to a new gear?
We'll know in a week or so. Thank you all anyway :)

#FOSDEM #fosdem2025 #fosdem26

Ah nuts! Looks like the video of my #FOSDEM talk has a chunk missing.
I never seem to have any luck preserving my lightning talks.
Oh well, if you'd like to see me talk about psychogeography, open data, and crowd-sourcing - please invite me to your next conference 😄

"Evolving git for the next decade" by Patrick Steinhardt from #FOSDEM 2026 is a good one.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HTJK33-evolving_git_for_the_next_decade/

#FOSDEM 2026 was awesome! 🧇

Very cool to meet lots of interesting people :) 🍻 🫂

Video & Slides of my talk about SucréLA are online! 🎉

SucréLA: open source usb 3.0 logic analyzer based on FPGA https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/WSKHHU-sucrela_open_source_usb_3_0_logic_analyzer_based_on_fpga/

#FPGA #opensource #hardware #logiciellibre #sigrok #litex #soc #pcb #usb

#FOSDEM 2026 was awesome! 🧇

Very cool to meet lots of interesting people :) 🍻 🫂

Video & Slides of my talk about SucréLA are online! 🎉

SucréLA: open source usb 3.0 logic analyzer based on FPGA https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/WSKHHU-sucrela_open_source_usb_3_0_logic_analyzer_based_on_fpga/

#FPGA #opensource #hardware #logiciellibre #sigrok #litex #soc #pcb #usb

I'm a simple man, I see a local Brussels Star Wars inspired beer, I order it. En Stoemelings Jawa IPA

#FOSDEM #beer #CraftBeer #Brussels #microbrewery #StarWars #BeersOfMastodon #Beerstodon #BeerGeek

My Main track talk at #FOSDEM has now published it's video:

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/9QVUEC-strategy_for_trusting_your_employer_in_open_source_a_historical_approach/

As ever, I really enjoyed my time at the conference and can't thank the organisers enough for allowing me to present somewhat controversial (but hopefully interesting) viewpoints that don't get traction at other conferences.

My Main track talk at #FOSDEM has now published it's video:

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/9QVUEC-strategy_for_trusting_your_employer_in_open_source_a_historical_approach/

As ever, I really enjoyed my time at the conference and can't thank the organisers enough for allowing me to present somewhat controversial (but hopefully interesting) viewpoints that don't get traction at other conferences.

The #FOSDEM talk from @haubles and myself about Mastodon’s upcoming community governance plans; our vision, mission and values; and updates to the server recommendations, is now available to watch. I was honoured to be asked to co-present this session.

More to come on all of these topics over the coming weeks, on our blog and on the main project account.

I’ll be posting about the other sessions from the #SocialWeb Devroom over the next few weeks, as well.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HJYRFF-tending-the-herd/

Here's the second published video of my FOSDEM talks, about VM Integrations in systemd:

https://video.fosdem.org/2026/h2213/G7VMEN-vm_integration_in_systemd.av1.webm

one more to come, stay tuned.

#systemd #fosdem #fosdem2026

You can see the couple of slides that got missed at the start lol

#FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026

Here's the first published video of my FOSDEM talks, about native OCI support in systemd:

https://video.fosdem.org/2026/ua2118/ZKKQWC-native_oci_container_support_in_systemd.av1.webm

two more to come, stay tuned.

#systemd #fosdem #fosdem2026

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

Just found out about Digital Freedom Foundation @dff which organises freedom days for software, hardware and documents (Reminds me of #DIDay action in Germany rn! https://di.day/)

https://digitalfreedoms.org/

From their map, seems to be heavily Italian! Reminds me of another #FOSDEM talk from another network of mostly Italian projects.

The ecology of freeware in Europe is super rich and varied.

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

EEEE the talk @sableraph and I gave at #FOSDEM. Long live @processing

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/7TY3JV-processing/

I can't say enough good things about #FOSDEM. It was my first time visiting #Brussels and I was so impressed by the city and its people

I learned so much from many amazing speakers, and came home with a huge to-do list. They even gave me the microphone for a bit 😅 I'll link to the video as soon as it's available

MY BIG TAKEAWAY
The world feels dark - esp. in the 🇺🇸 right now. But FOSDEM filled me with light, and hope for the #Fediverse and our future. There's a new energy here. Let's get to it.

FOSDEM is over and we would like to thank everyone who came and visited our stand.

We sold all of the phone bundles https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1s-bundle/ we took along which was a fantastic result. #fosdem #furilabs #linuxonmobile #flx1s #thankyou

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

The recording of my presentation at #FOSDEM "Sequoia git: Making Signed Commits Matter" has been published!

Thanks a lot to all the @fosdem volunteers for organizing another amazing FOSDEM!

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/KFSUCW-sequoia-git/

#pgp

https://spectra.video/w/7hsRkrevhuTyV1q1qxkPjM

"Centralised systems were designed with the best of intentions, but were turned against us anyway. And peer-to-peer systems will be exactly the same.

How do we make the next generation of protocols more difficult to weaponise?”

Here’s a clean recording of my #FOSDEM talk “Willow - Protocols for an uncertain future”. This talk was a real labour of love, hope you enjoy it!!!

https://spectra.video/w/7hsRkrevhuTyV1q1qxkPjM

"Centralised systems were designed with the best of intentions, but were turned against us anyway. And peer-to-peer systems will be exactly the same.

How do we make the next generation of protocols more difficult to weaponise?”

Here’s a clean recording of my #FOSDEM talk “Willow - Protocols for an uncertain future”. This talk was a real labour of love, hope you enjoy it!!!

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

My highlight of Fosdem26 was our panel ‘The Fediverse and the EU Digital Services Act: Solutions to the Challenges of Modern Social Media?' ✨

Thanks for giving me the possibility to speak about our @offene_netzwerke demands.

A huge thank you @jmaris for organising the panel & his excellent moderation. 👏

Thanks @alexandrageese member of the 🇪🇺 parliament, who took the time to join us & the FOSS community for this important debate over the weekend.

1/2

#fosdem2026 #fosdem #fediverse #dsa

@krisbuytaert
There was an interesting talk at #FOSDEM in th Social Web room where it was mentioned that the way the #fediverse is going, with different servers geared towards specific data, is problematic. The idea was that all the extra data/fields should be pluggable in the standard #activitypub and be available on any server without having to create new accountsand servers for any different type of data. To display that data, different frontends can then be used with the same account.

Reading the Room: What Europe’s MySQL Community Is Really Saying: https://mariadb.org/reading-the-room-what-europes-mysql-community-is-really-saying/ #mariadb #opensource #database #mysql #percona #fosdem #fosdem2026

🆕 blog! “The cost of running OpenBenches.org”

After my recent presentation at FOSDEM, someone asked a pretty reasonable question. What does it cost to run OpenBenches?

It is, thankfully, surprisingly cheap! In part, that's because it is a relatively simple tech stack - PHP, MySQL, a couple of API calls to external services. It was designed to be as low cost while …

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/02/the-cost-of-running-openbenches-org/
⸻
#fosdem #foss #money #OpenBenches

Reading the Room: What Europe’s MySQL Community Is Really Saying: https://mariadb.org/reading-the-room-what-europes-mysql-community-is-really-saying/ #mariadb #opensource #database #mysql #percona #fosdem #fosdem2026

Is anyone actually on Nolto .. I would expect it to have gotten a boost after #fosdem and #cfgmgmtcamp

The #SocialWeb track at #FOSDEM kicked off with a talk by @pfefferle that covered WordPress and a "single click" philosophy to set up an ActivityPub instance. Matthias also talked about how blogs and similar sites can broaden the reach of the open social web - this was one of the themes of the day.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/XFTETA-federated-wordpress/

The #SocialWeb track at #FOSDEM kicked off with a talk by @pfefferle that covered WordPress and a "single click" philosophy to set up an ActivityPub instance. Matthias also talked about how blogs and similar sites can broaden the reach of the open social web - this was one of the themes of the day.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/XFTETA-federated-wordpress/

The #SocialWeb track at #FOSDEM kicked off with a talk by @pfefferle that covered WordPress and a "single click" philosophy to set up an ActivityPub instance. Matthias also talked about how blogs and similar sites can broaden the reach of the open social web - this was one of the themes of the day.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/XFTETA-federated-wordpress/

I hope the Mastodon team can attend FediCon this summer, I know it's a long journey, but I'd seriously lose it if I was able to meet @Gargron and team in person.

I'm the biggest Mastodon fangirl, I already have some early toots that I want them to sign 😅

#FediCon #FOSDEM #Mastodon

I hope the Mastodon team can attend FediCon this summer, I know it's a long journey, but I'd seriously lose it if I was able to meet @Gargron and team in person.

I'm the biggest Mastodon fangirl, I already have some early toots that I want them to sign 😅

#FediCon #FOSDEM #Mastodon

Back from #FOSDEM. It was SO fun, and I'm really proud I got to give a talk.
I feel really inspired and far more connected to the open source community.
So much work ahead...

My #FOSDEM 2026 talk is out: @servo Streams reimplementation 🎥

Also, I was really happy to meet the Servo team in person at FOSDEM.

https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2026/h1309/3J8GUD-servo-streams-reimplementation.mp4

Back home from #fosdem. Great talks, lovely people and cool stickers. We now have lychee stickers! Thank you @nlnet and @NGIZero for printing the stickers and for supporting lychee in the first place.

Back home from #fosdem. Great talks, lovely people and cool stickers. We now have lychee stickers! Thank you @nlnet and @NGIZero for printing the stickers and for supporting lychee in the first place.

On our way home from #FOSDEM. Met so many amazing people form the #fediverse community. Thanks to everyone for the discussions on events federation and more. @linos @Bonfire @mayel @ivan @liaizon @lesion @michael the folks from Mobilizion and anyone I forgot.

Since you can never be _everywhere_ you want to be at #FOSDEM, sometimes you have to watch back some of the dev room talks you missed.

@a from the @rustfoundation gave a great talk: A phishy case study - attacks on crates.io and others (namely @pypi and npmjs.com )

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/GFA3RJ-a_phishy_case_study/

Go watch it.

Announcement: The 3rd Berlin #Fediverse Day will take place again in Berlin from September 11 to September 13, 2026. 🚀 We are very excited and more information will follow as soon as possible. 👨‍👨‍👧‍👧

- -
Ankündigung, der 3. Berliner Fediverse Day findet vom 11.09.-13.09.2026 wieder in #Berlin statt. 🚀 Wir freuen uns schon sehr und weitere Informationen kommen, asap. 👨‍👨‍👧‍👧

#digitalsovereignty #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #SocialWeb #SocialWebFOSDEM #SocialWebFOSDEM2026

The #SocialWeb track at #FOSDEM kicked off with a talk by @pfefferle that covered WordPress and a "single click" philosophy to set up an ActivityPub instance. Matthias also talked about how blogs and similar sites can broaden the reach of the open social web - this was one of the themes of the day.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/XFTETA-federated-wordpress/

The @roost.tools talk from @fosdem is up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOoUfaInsaE

We’ve uploaded it to YouTube for convenience, or you can view it and the slides on the FOSDEM event page:

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/U7ABHE-roost-osprey/

Give it a watch to learn a bit about trust and safety and Osprey, our open source automated rules engine and investigation tool!

#FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #OpenSource #TrustAndSafety

Random #fosdem notes. Met a nice dev from @ente #ente with whom I discussed a subtle bug on GitHub a few weeks ago (thanks for the now released fix!). Also met @liaizon. Thanks for reaching out; it's always cool to discuss the integration #activitypub in wikis!

Anyone needs a European Sleeper night train ticket from Brussels to Berlin for tomorrow Wednesday the 4th of February? I cannot take the train, I can't cancel the ticket but it's transferable.

#fosdem #teamnighttrain

Thanks all for listening to my talk about #Fedify at #FOSDEM 2026 today! Here's my deck for the talk: Fedify: Building ActivityPub servers without the pain.

@fosdem (belated) photo from the #FOSDEM opening keynote yesterday

@fosdem as is tradition: the photo from the closing talk of #FOSDEM

Of note:
* Next year, the default network of #FOSDEM will be #IPv6 only. At lot of things will break, and this is intentional
* FOSDEM will become political. If you are in policy, politics, a position of power: reach out to us at policy@fosdem.org

https://spectra.video/w/7hsRkrevhuTyV1q1qxkPjM

"Centralised systems were designed with the best of intentions, but were turned against us anyway. And peer-to-peer systems will be exactly the same.

How do we make the next generation of protocols more difficult to weaponise?”

Here’s a clean recording of my #FOSDEM talk “Willow - Protocols for an uncertain future”. This talk was a real labour of love, hope you enjoy it!!!

On stage now, @django — arguing for widespread adoption of ActivityPub client-server (C2S) protocol.

I agree with him.

At the very least, to make extension of ActivityPub through JSON-LD namespaces possible.

But also to decouple Fediverse client development from Fediverse server development.

And more.

#ActivityPub #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #SocialWeb #SocialWebFOSDEM #SocialWebFOSDEM2026

🆕 blog! “The cost of running OpenBenches.org”

After my recent presentation at FOSDEM, someone asked a pretty reasonable question. What does it cost to run OpenBenches?

It is, thankfully, surprisingly cheap! In part, that's because it is a relatively simple tech stack - PHP, MySQL, a couple of API calls to external services. It was designed to be as low cost while …

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/02/the-cost-of-running-openbenches-org/
⸻
#fosdem #foss #money #OpenBenches

The cost of running OpenBenches.org

After my recent presentation at FOSDEM, someone asked a pretty reasonable question. What does it cost to run OpenBenches?

It is, thankfully, surprisingly cheap! In part, that's because it is a relatively simple tech stack - PHP, MySQL, a couple of API calls to external services. It was designed to be as low cost while also being useful. Here's the breakdown:

Hosting - £171 per year

Our biggest expense but, I think, our most reasonable. Krystal charges around £342 for a 2 year contract. That includes unlimited bandwidth and storage, as well as the domain name. We have nearly 400GB of photos and bot scraping means we can use over 900GB of bandwidth per month - so Krystal give us a rather good deal!

Use this affiliate link and code EDENT to get a small discount.

Stadia Maps - US$20 / month

Geocoding is surprisingly hard to do locally. We need to transform latitude and longitude into addresses, and then back again. Stadia Maps cost about the same as our hosting! What's rather annoying is that we only use about half the API calls in our plan. We need to find a cheaper solution.

Mapping - Free!

When we used Stadia for drawing maps, we regularly ran over our quota. So we switched to OpenFreeMap which produces gorgeous interactive maps.

The service has been rock solid and very responsive to bugs on GitHub.

Logo - US$5

I'm not a good designer, so we bought a logo from The Noun Project and then coloured it in. Bargain for a fiver!

Image CDN - Free!

Although we have unlimited bandwidth with Krystal, we're only located in one region - the UK. WeServ. It's also pointless serving full resolution images to small screens.

So WeServ offers free image resizing and global CDNs. Personally, I'm not a fan of CloudFlare (their CDN partner) so I'm looking to change provider.

OCR - Free!

People don't want to type in the inscription of the photo, so we use Google Cloud Vision.

We send less than 1,000 requests per month - so we're inside their free tier. If we get more popular, that'll get more expensive. But I don't know of a local-first OCR which is as good as Google's. Sadly, Tesseract is rubbish for extracting text from photos.

Authentication - Free!

We don't want to store anyone's passwords. The free tier of Auth0 allows us to do social login for up to 25,000 monthly users. Which is more than enough for us.

Sadly, Auth0 don't support the Fediverse, so I had to build my own "Log-in with Mastodon" service.

As much as we'd like to run social login locally, we simply don't want to be responsible for securing users' details & API keys.

Software - Free!

As per the OpenBenches colophon we use a lot of cool FOSS. Small JS libraries, big PHP frameworks, and everything in between.

Income

Thanks to GitHub Sponsors we make a whopping US$3 per month!

Similarly, our OpenCollective Sponsors brings in about £3 per month.

Merchandising! You can buy OpenBenches branded t-shirts, mugs, and hats. That nets us about £20 per year

Call it roughly £80 income. OK, it is better than nothing - but doesn't even cover a quarter of our costs. Sometimes people give us a higher donation privately, which is also very welcome. These people are listed on our README.

Total

On the assumption that our time is worthless (ha!) and that we only rarely go over our providers' API limits, and we get in some revenue, the cost of running OpenBenches is less than £300 per year.

That's not bad for a fun little hobby. People certainly spend more than that on Funkopops, vaping, and mechanical keyboards!

Nevertheless, I'm always slightly worried that we'll go viral and have an unexpectedly high bill from our API providers.

I would love to be able to hire a proper designer to make the site look a bit nicer. I also want to be able to buy a modern iPhone so that I can test it in the latest Safari.

If you have any suggestions for cutting costs, or non-scummy ways to help us raise funds, please drop a comment below.

“While the RISC-V specification provides strong security primitives (e.g., PMP and cleaner privilege separation), implementations consistently choose insecure defaults—leaving unprivileged timing sources enabled, shipping undocumented vendor extensions… RISC-V is at an inflection point: the architecture is still young enough to fix, but adoption is accelerating fast. The decisions vendors make today… will be baked into billions of chips we cannot patch.” #riscv #fosdem

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/DL89YW-how-secure-are-commercial-risc-v-cpus/

@bogo recording of the closing talk and https://dashboard.fosdem.org

#FOSDEM

@KekunPlazas @russss the science is pretty clear that a FFP2 and eye goggles/face shield plus proper procedures protected the people caring for COVID patients in the sick wards in 12+ hour shifts. We can not ventilate #FOSDEM better than the physical infrastructure allows.

A stuffy room with mostly healthy people is lower risk than an overcrowded intensive care unit with people dying left and right.

As such, I do believe that personal safety is feasible to a very high degree of confidence.

@Albright No. This is such a BS take.

Open Source has *always* been political.

As a way to fight back to control over what you can run on your devices, by creating them as public goods.

And the movement also pushed back against software patterns, and now in more modern times against age gating, the erosion of private messaging (encryption), and reducing the reliance on big tech.

To illustrate, here is one of the first slides of the largest Open Source conference in Europe, #FOSDEM.

Are they any stats published for #FOSDEM yet here at the fediverse?

Now as you might have landed somewhat after #FOSDEM, add your missing pieces and omitted details to https://github.com/bagder/FOSDEM

I met several newcomers who said it was helpful, and I think we can make it even more so with more eyes and fingers involved.

Hey #fosdem attendees, how safe is it to attend nowadays? Do the organizers do anything to limit the propagation of airborne diseases? Are many attendees wearing FFP2 masks or higher? I'd love to come back next year but I don't want to risk for my life and the one of my family, I don't want to bring anything unwanted back home.

finally catching my breath after a weekend of lovely people at #FOSDEM, thank you for making it great. There are more and more reasons to be hopeful about p2p, and I’m in awe of all my friends who have been working so hard these last few years

Anyone needs a European Sleeper night train ticket from Brussels to Berlin for tomorrow Wednesday the 4th of February? I cannot take the train, I can't cancel the ticket but it's transferable.

#fosdem #teamnighttrain

Now as you might have landed somewhat after #FOSDEM, add your missing pieces and omitted details to https://github.com/bagder/FOSDEM

I met several newcomers who said it was helpful, and I think we can make it even more so with more eyes and fingers involved.

I have this still unspecific idea in my head about somehow applying a coordinate system on the ULB campus and #FOSDEM maps (or something) to help us deal with "let's meet at..." problems once and for all.

So many impressions from my first visit at #FOSDEM

One is the vast amount of stickers @nlnet offered at their stand. One stack of stickers for each project they funded. Absolutely impressive.

And now the night train to Stockholm

#travel #fosdem #fosdem2026 #europwbyrail #hamburghbf

And now the night train to Stockholm

#travel #fosdem #fosdem2026 #europwbyrail #hamburghbf

@homelab @homelab_de Fresh from #FOSDEM:

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/L3VFMN-nixos-routers/

#nixos #router

This is what working on board a train has to look like!

#FOSDEM

At this year's #fosdem were many urgent calls to save #democracy (e.g. by @RichiH), yet we don't even deal with fascist tendencies in our communities.

Mostly men™ with authoritarian behaviours, using their positions of [limited] power to oppress and only know escalation, no dialogue.

Start taking action by stand up against unacceptable behavior more, correct your friends and colleagues when they have their shitty, unnecessary power trips.

Can't fight #fascism if you are not behaving #antifascist

At this year's #fosdem were many urgent calls to save #democracy (e.g. by @RichiH), yet we don't even deal with fascist tendencies in our communities.

Mostly men™ with authoritarian behaviours, using their positions of [limited] power to oppress and only know escalation, no dialogue.

Start taking action by stand up against unacceptable behavior more, correct your friends and colleagues when they have their shitty, unnecessary power trips.

Can't fight #fascism if you are not behaving #antifascist

I love and appreciate community events such as #Fosdem, but it makes me sad to see the gender imbalance in #foss tech. I'm aware of the issue, but being at such a large-scale event makes it very tangible and visible.

#deib #dei #diversity #opensource #womenintech #womeninSTEM

There was a problem with the video upload before, my #FOSDEM talk is now available to watch. For real this time!
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/L3BK7S-free-as-in-burned-out/

I just went there and did a quick triage in pending @badgefed items while I still have the #fosdem energy flowing

https://github.com/tryvocalcat/badgefed/issues

My trip finally begins : Tonight, the 453 will bring me in a comfortable wagon-lits to Berlin, the first stop of my #FOSSRail trip from 🇧🇪 Brussels to 🇹🇭 Bangkok connecting the FOSDEM with the FOSSASIA by train.

I will spend the next two weeks on trains across 12 countries and 11.000 km on rails.

May the games begin ✊🏽.

#FOSSRail #FOSDEM #FOSSASIA #CrossBorderRail #TeamNightTrain

The #FOSDEM talk from @haubles and myself about Mastodon’s upcoming community governance plans; our vision, mission and values; and updates to the server recommendations, is now available to watch. I was honoured to be asked to co-present this session.

More to come on all of these topics over the coming weeks, on our blog and on the main project account.

I’ll be posting about the other sessions from the #SocialWeb Devroom over the next few weeks, as well.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HJYRFF-tending-the-herd/

My trip finally begins : Tonight, the 453 will bring me in a comfortable wagon-lits to Berlin, the first stop of my #FOSSRail trip from 🇧🇪 Brussels to 🇹🇭 Bangkok connecting the FOSDEM with the FOSSASIA by train.

I will spend the next two weeks on trains across 12 countries and 11.000 km on rails.

May the games begin ✊🏽.

#FOSSRail #FOSDEM #FOSSASIA #CrossBorderRail #TeamNightTrain

We had a great time at #FOSDEM, as always. It is such a treasure to gather with so many fantastic people from the #FOSS community. This is all thanks to the @fosdem volunteers who make this great happening possible. A very big thank you to everyone who contributed. It had such as positive impact that it brought an early spring to Brussels.

#FOSDEM: Wo das "Herz der freien Welt" schlägt - Golem.de
#FOSDEM26 #opensource #linux
https://www.golem.de/news/fosdem-2026-wo-das-herz-der-freien-welt-schlaegt-2602-204902.html

My trip finally begins : Tonight, the 453 will bring me in a comfortable wagon-lits to Berlin, the first stop of my #FOSSRail trip from 🇧🇪 Brussels to 🇹🇭 Bangkok connecting the FOSDEM with the FOSSASIA by train.

I will spend the next two weeks on trains across 12 countries and 11.000 km on rails.

May the games begin ✊🏽.

#FOSSRail #FOSDEM #FOSSASIA #CrossBorderRail #TeamNightTrain

Sending good vibes to everyone at #FOSDEM! I couldn't make it this year, but I hope to be there next time!

If you're there, reply with your favorite talk so far!

#FOSDEM: Wo das "Herz der freien Welt" schlägt - Golem.de
#FOSDEM26 #opensource #linux
https://www.golem.de/news/fosdem-2026-wo-das-herz-der-freien-welt-schlaegt-2602-204902.html

Home from a wild #Fosdem, expect picture dumps and blogs this week... but for now tea and sleep are the priority. For now though please enjoy my favourite sticker of the many I was given! #GenAINeinDanke #fosdem2026

I love and appreciate community events such as #Fosdem, but it makes me sad to see the gender imbalance in #foss tech. I'm aware of the issue, but being at such a large-scale event makes it very tangible and visible.

#deib #dei #diversity #opensource #womenintech #womeninSTEM

We had a spy infiltrate the depths of the Social Web Devroom at #FOSDEM this year and can leak the insider information that there were ⁂'s on many slides throughout the presentations

The #FOSDEM talk from @haubles and myself about Mastodon’s upcoming community governance plans; our vision, mission and values; and updates to the server recommendations, is now available to watch. I was honoured to be asked to co-present this session.

More to come on all of these topics over the coming weeks, on our blog and on the main project account.

I’ll be posting about the other sessions from the #SocialWeb Devroom over the next few weeks, as well.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HJYRFF-tending-the-herd/

My #FOSDEM talk recording from today is already public! Check it out in case you missed the talk (or didn't get into the room because it was packed full)

https://video.fosdem.org/2026/ub4132/ZNAAZX-mainline_kernel_for_fairphones_-_2026_update.mp4
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/ZNAAZX-mainline_kernel_for_fairphones_-_2026_update/

#postmarketOS #Fairphone #LinuxMobile #MobileLinux

not to derail all the excitement about #FOSDEM because I indeed had a very good time™ but god damn the ratio of white amab people was way too high (I say as a white amab person from the us of fascism)

not to derail all the excitement about #FOSDEM because I indeed had a very good time™ but god damn the ratio of white amab people was way too high (I say as a white amab person from the us of fascism)

Very excited to hear about ties - federated bookmarks. I think I'll migrate to that from my mothballed Postmarks server. #FOSDEM #SocialWeb

Mastodon plushy Plushtodon at FOSDEM 2026.

Not mine.

@Mastodon

#Fediverse #FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #SocialWeb #SocialWebFOSDEM #SocialWebFOSDEM2026 #Mastodon #Plushtodon

The #FOSDEM talk from @haubles and myself about Mastodon’s upcoming community governance plans; our vision, mission and values; and updates to the server recommendations, is now available to watch. I was honoured to be asked to co-present this session.

More to come on all of these topics over the coming weeks, on our blog and on the main project account.

I’ll be posting about the other sessions from the #SocialWeb Devroom over the next few weeks, as well.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HJYRFF-tending-the-herd/

can someone share a speakers picture of the #FOSDEM #socialweb dev room?

#followerpower #fediverse

can someone share a speakers picture of the #FOSDEM #socialweb dev room?

#followerpower #fediverse

A question from the GitHub fringe at #FOSDEM.

Do you count people who write detailed and useful bug report as contributors?

Would you list a bug reporter in your contributors / credits?

Why? Why not?

A question from the GitHub fringe at #FOSDEM.

Do you count people who write detailed and useful bug report as contributors?

Would you list a bug reporter in your contributors / credits?

Why? Why not?

I LOVED the Belgium vibe - #fosdem #bigtech

not to derail all the excitement about #FOSDEM because I indeed had a very good time™ but god damn the ratio of white amab people was way too high (I say as a white amab person from the us of fascism)

can someone share a speakers picture of the #FOSDEM #socialweb dev room?

#followerpower #fediverse

Kudos to the incredible work of thr #fosdem volunteers, the socialweb track organizers @andypiper, @evanprodromou and all others behind scenes, the people narrating the event, all the speakers, supporters, and people moving the fediverse one centimeter forward each time.

I definitely had a good time, and although I could not spend that much time as I expected, it was definitely one hell of a drug, and I pretend to repeat the dose each year.

Kudos!

We had a spy infiltrate the depths of the Social Web Devroom at #FOSDEM this year and can leak the insider information that there were ⁂'s on many slides throughout the presentations

We had a spy infiltrate the depths of the Social Web Devroom at #FOSDEM this year and can leak the insider information that there were ⁂'s on many slides throughout the presentations

Hey, #FOSDEM people I saw a stand with light blue t-shirt with a growing tree on it and test like "seed, growth, sustain". Do you know which company was selling it?

#fosdEM2026 #treeHugger

We have our fosdem Champion: @tommi

Follow us in the fediverse group on FOSDEM @fediverso

#fosdem #fediverse #fediverso

FOSDEM achievement = unlocked: yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting @bagder in person and grab some cool #curl stickers, yay! 🥳

I was really sad to miss his keynote (early train, sigh), but I'm planning to watch it online.

It was amazing to meet so many wonderful people at #FOSDEM... I've already started a countdown on my phone for the next edition. I can't wait.

And now: reviewing hundreds of photos I took with my phone and my Canon DSLR. The nostalgia is real 🥲

The GPIO extension is one of our absolute favorites!

Direct access to the underlying 40 GPIOs and DIY ready.

More details here: https://developers.mecha.so/docs/extensions/io-breakout

This picture is from our booth at #FOSDEM 🌟

The #FOSDEM talk from @haubles and myself about Mastodon’s upcoming community governance plans; our vision, mission and values; and updates to the server recommendations, is now available to watch. I was honoured to be asked to co-present this session.

More to come on all of these topics over the coming weeks, on our blog and on the main project account.

I’ll be posting about the other sessions from the #SocialWeb Devroom over the next few weeks, as well.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HJYRFF-tending-the-herd/

I am really excited to watch streams of #FOSDEM talks tomorrow concerning #Fediverse discovery and following global hashtags: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/social-web/

I believe that this all could work much better than #FediBuzz if it gets built into server implementations itself.

@alexandrageese Thanks for joining me on the panel on DSA at #FOSDEM. At EU Tech Stars you will meet our technical director @renchap.

FOSDEM achievement = unlocked: yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting @bagder in person and grab some cool #curl stickers, yay! 🥳

I was really sad to miss his keynote (early train, sigh), but I'm planning to watch it online.

It was amazing to meet so many wonderful people at #FOSDEM... I've already started a countdown on my phone for the next edition. I can't wait.

And now: reviewing hundreds of photos I took with my phone and my Canon DSLR. The nostalgia is real 🥲

Great talk by @samuel_thibault of #GNU #Hurd fame, in a packed room, selling the the Hurd really well (in my not entirely unbiased opinion, of course) and starting with

It's all about Freedom #0,

and also Freedom from the system administrator. We know all about that, isn't right #Guix folks?

And although @debian is really still carrying and championing the Hurd effort, plenty of attribution to the work of others, mentioning Guix at least three times!

#fosdem #debian

The #FOSDEM talk from @haubles and myself about Mastodon’s upcoming community governance plans; our vision, mission and values; and updates to the server recommendations, is now available to watch. I was honoured to be asked to co-present this session.

More to come on all of these topics over the coming weeks, on our blog and on the main project account.

I’ll be posting about the other sessions from the #SocialWeb Devroom over the next few weeks, as well.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HJYRFF-tending-the-herd/

The #FOSDEM talk from @haubles and myself about Mastodon’s upcoming community governance plans; our vision, mission and values; and updates to the server recommendations, is now available to watch. I was honoured to be asked to co-present this session.

More to come on all of these topics over the coming weeks, on our blog and on the main project account.

I’ll be posting about the other sessions from the #SocialWeb Devroom over the next few weeks, as well.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HJYRFF-tending-the-herd/

The #FOSDEM talk from @haubles and myself about Mastodon’s upcoming community governance plans; our vision, mission and values; and updates to the server recommendations, is now available to watch. I was honoured to be asked to co-present this session.

More to come on all of these topics over the coming weeks, on our blog and on the main project account.

I’ll be posting about the other sessions from the #SocialWeb Devroom over the next few weeks, as well.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HJYRFF-tending-the-herd/

Aaand I'm back at work again after an amazing weekend at #FOSDEM 🥲

A big and warm thank you hug to all the friends I met and talked to in Brussels this time. Two packed days of events before #FOSDEM including an awesome prize ceremony, then two intense days at ULB where I must have talked to more than a hundred persons. All the positivity, the appreciation, the smiles, the ideas, the energy.

I got to end-keynote the thing and then top it off with more drinks and countless friends - again.

I'm drained now, but in a good way. I'll be back next year.

A big and warm thank you hug to all the friends I met and talked to in Brussels this time. Two packed days of events before #FOSDEM including an awesome prize ceremony, then two intense days at ULB where I must have talked to more than a hundred persons. All the positivity, the appreciation, the smiles, the ideas, the energy.

I got to end-keynote the thing and then top it off with more drinks and countless friends - again.

I'm drained now, but in a good way. I'll be back next year.

#FOSDEM was a blast - Faces of Fosdem updated with the 2026 #portrait batch : https://toujoursdeja.fr/projects/faces-of-fosdem/2026.html <3 👋 h01ger Long live #opensource #fosdem2026

If you take just one thing away from #FOSDEM this is it.
👇🏽
“If we lose our democracies, Open Source is irrelevant and goes away”

or putting it another way:

If we don’t apply, enforce, adopt and embrace Open Source in our public and government institutions we risk to lose our democracies.
#OpenSource #SaveDemocracy
Boost if you agree!
👍🏾

What a whirlwind 72 hours in #Brussels for #FOSDEM! Everyone I met has been working so so hard to build technology explicitly trying to break out of a broken system of corporate hegemony. There were so many different fields present here but I primarily focused on the #fediverse track.

It was an abfab honour and a super pleasure to be part of the #fosdem show!
~:\

Tnx @evan !

@mapache @pfefferle @andypiper @evanprodromou @haubles @darius @bjoernsta @django @resieguen @openforfuture @iusondemand @cwebber @tsyesika @zzepposs @melaniebartos @Pepijn @floppy @tobias @mayel @ivan @hongminhee@hackers.pub @samvie @benpate @neiman @hongminhee@hollo.social @liaizon @filippodb @magostinelli @publicspaces @cubicgarden @bogo @bonfire @michael @toon @FediVariety @vishnee @cypherhippie @nextgraph @localfirst

RE: https://social.wake.st/@liaizon/116000835661987385

信息密度好高，认识：GoToSocial、forgejo、nextcloud、Nix、f-droid、libreOffice、Guix、PostmarketOS、OrganicMaps、Garage、TAURI、Pixelfed（两个？）、Servo、Lemmy、ActivityPub(两个)、NGI、GNU、Funkwhale、NodeJS、Mobilizon、ForgeFed、XWiki、flarum

还有左侧forgejo和flarum很显眼

#FOSDEM

What a whirlwind 72 hours in #Brussels for #FOSDEM! Everyone I met has been working so so hard to build technology explicitly trying to break out of a broken system of corporate hegemony. There were so many different fields present here but I primarily focused on the #fediverse track.

@tommi It was very much my pleasure to meet such an enthusiastic @inventaire supporter 😍

Looking forward to our next encounter!

#FOSDEM #inventaireio

#FOSDEM was a blast - Faces of Fosdem updated with the 2026 #portrait batch : https://toujoursdeja.fr/projects/faces-of-fosdem/2026.html <3 👋 h01ger Long live #opensource #fosdem2026

We had a great time at #FOSDEM, as always. It is such a treasure to gather with so many fantastic people from the #FOSS community. This is all thanks to the @fosdem volunteers who make this great happening possible. A very big thank you to everyone who contributed. It had such as positive impact that it brought an early spring to Brussels.

#FOSDEM was a blast - Faces of Fosdem updated with the 2026 #portrait batch : https://toujoursdeja.fr/projects/faces-of-fosdem/2026.html <3 👋 h01ger Long live #opensource #fosdem2026

A question from the GitHub fringe at #FOSDEM.

Do you count people who write detailed and useful bug report as contributors?

Would you list a bug reporter in your contributors / credits?

Why? Why not?

A question from the GitHub fringe at #FOSDEM.

Do you count people who write detailed and useful bug report as contributors?

Would you list a bug reporter in your contributors / credits?

Why? Why not?

I want to be ready.

What's the next thing like #FOSDEM in 2026 or 2027?

This jealousy is wearing me out.

The first four minutes by @RichiH at https://video.fosdem.org/2026/janson/SFKNTZ-welcome_to_fosdem_2026.av1.webm

Be awesome at #FOSDEM. Let's continue our journey to better things by using and sharing Open Source and Free Software :)

It was an honor to speak at the #FOSDEM. Thank you for the possibility to share my message on how to lead change from closed source to #opensource and why contributing to this transition actually matters more than ever.

In case you missed the talk and would like to join the #FOSS revolution, I'm happy to share the recording: https://video.fosdem.org/2026/aw1120/7YMJST-how-to-lead-change-to-open-source.av1.webm

#fosdem #opensource #foss #leadership #changemanagement #unplugtrump #vendorlockin #bigtech

So many impressions from my first visit at #FOSDEM

One is the vast amount of stickers @nlnet offered at their stand. One stack of stickers for each project they funded. Absolutely impressive.

Tornato a casa, sto ancora metabolizzando 😅
Al #FOSDEM ho incontrato persone che non sapevo ci fossero, perso chi volevo trovare (e anche chi era con me 🙃).
Un continuo trovarsi e perdersi, non ho fatto tutto quello che pensavo, ma ho fatto cose che non immaginavo avrei mai potuto fare.
E alla fine abbiamo trovato un bel posto per incontrarci tuttə. #cosebelle

Grazie a chi c’era e soprattutto a @magostinelli, @ecofra, di @fedimedia & ai mitici @_elena e @evan ❤️

A big and warm thank you hug to all the friends I met and talked to in Brussels this time. Two packed days of events before #FOSDEM including an awesome prize ceremony, then two intense days at ULB where I must have talked to more than a hundred persons. All the positivity, the appreciation, the smiles, the ideas, the energy.

I got to end-keynote the thing and then top it off with more drinks and countless friends - again.

I'm drained now, but in a good way. I'll be back next year.

Some nice themes running through the #SocialWeb Devroom at #FOSDEM: storytelling from different national and international contexts (Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Europe); new apps and ideas (badgefed, splinter, FASPs, Spritely); building infrastructure and foundational tech (Bonfire, Fedify, Emissary). This is really great momentum! The speaker list today has been wonderful.

So many impressions from my first visit at #FOSDEM

One is the vast amount of stickers @nlnet offered at their stand. One stack of stickers for each project they funded. Absolutely impressive.

We had a creative time making trees and tree patterns in @turtlestitch at #Fosdem

There are two more workshops for young people tomorrow at #fosdemjunior - creating critters and flowers and stars.

All my #turtlestitch resources are here: https://www.warwick.ac.uk/turtlestitch

@django it was so nice meeting you in person and thanks again for the lovely t-shirt!

have a safe trip!

#fosdem

I return back home from #FOSDEM with only a few hundred curl stickers left. I say we did a good job.

Predictions for the best #FOSDEM 2027 swag:

1. Hexagon stickers backed by a travel-size stick of Ben & Anna mint deodorant

2. FOSS mascot face masks for the people with _hacking_ coughs who really want to fork their illness instead of watching the livestream (and/or the hypochondriacs uncomfortably and unexpectedly sitting beside such an inconsiderate person)

I miraculously made it to the correct train on the correct platform at the correct time. Goodbye, Brussels!

#FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #FOSDEM26

In a sea of stickers and badges, this was a delightfully unique piece of swag from #FOSDEM 😄

@Pol @mania @jamesbelchamber
Because naps can be more than just sleep?

For instance, some neurodivergent people really benefit from some down time (even a few minutes) to recharge and be ready for the rest of the day.

Places like #fosdem are loud and busy and hyper stimulating and I'm willing to bet that the number of neurodivergent attendees is probably very high. And for some of them, an event like this is a real challenge.

I think a nap room is a great idea.

In a sea of stickers and badges, this was a delightfully unique piece of swag from #FOSDEM 😄

@fosdem I would honestly prefer not to be awake, but this is nice.

#fosdem

@RichiH @fosdem

Thanks very much for all the hard work the volunteers, speakers, participants and sponsors put into this event! It's very much appreciated!

Despite the crowdedness, terrible audio, broken elevators, toilets, vending machines and water fountains, queues for everything, confusing signage and all around general chaos, #FOSDEM is my favorite conference because it's so inspiring to see what a community of like minded people can achieve! Keep up the good work, everyone!

The talk I gave yesterday at #FOSDEM, titled "Free as in Burned Out, who really pays for Open Source Software?" has already been published!
You can watch it here:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/L3BK7S-free-as-in-burned-out/

Great talk by @samuel_thibault of #GNU #Hurd fame, in a packed room, selling the the Hurd really well (in my not entirely unbiased opinion, of course) and starting with

It's all about Freedom #0,

and also Freedom from the system administrator. We know all about that, isn't right #Guix folks?

And although @debian is really still carrying and championing the Hurd effort, plenty of attribution to the work of others, mentioning Guix at least three times!

#fosdem #debian

One of the parts of #FOSDEM I also always love is meeting other participants you never met before on the train and hear about their experiences at #fosdem. After 1h we started talking about the #Fediverse and #Mastodon and decided to take a picture of this /dev/random table.

Some interesting (to me) stats from #FOSDEM

Talks about NFTs: 0.

Presentations about the Metaverse: None.

Cryptobros inviting me to a party in order to schill their coin: Zip.

Really enthusiastic LLM users describing how AI has improved their OSS codebase: Zilch.

People complaining about pronouns and codes of conduct: Nada.

"Ironic" hats saying "Make xyz Great Again": Conspicuous by their absence.

What did *you* think was missing from FOSDEM?

#FOSDEM If we lose our democracy the open source *is* more than needed to protect us in whatever happens next. There is life after a system collapse. @RichiH

FOSDEM has already started sharing video recordings!

https://video.fosdem.org/2026/

They're grouped by room. It's a massive task, so they're not done yet (FOSDEM is still ongoing as I'm typing this 😉).

Also, you'll want the webm version, not mp4 (unless your device can't use the webm version).

And they have generated captions! While not perfect, they're better than nothing at all. They can help with accessibility, and they're useful for grabbing the text of a talk.

https://video.fosdem.org/2026/FAQ.txt

#fosdem

Was ist diese #FOSDEM eigentlich?

Jetzt nicht inhaltlich, das ist mir klar. Sondern vom Publikum her?

Auf dem Bild des Closings sieht eins die Leute...
Keinen einzigen Satz CatEars.
Vielleicht zwei Leute mit Maske.
Und vielleicht zwei, drei Leute, bei denen ich einen gewissen Vibe spüre.

Wirkt also wie Chaos nur ohne Chaos? Oder so?
Also Leute, die Kollegen sein könnten, aber nicht diese sprichwörtlichen "normalen" Leute?

@fosdem as is tradition: the photo from the closing talk of #FOSDEM

Of note:
* Next year, the default network of #FOSDEM will be #IPv6 only. At lot of things will break, and this is intentional
* FOSDEM will become political. If you are in policy, politics, a position of power: reach out to us at policy@fosdem.org

Great panel in the (packed) EU Policy dev room on Fediverse and the DSA focusing on how the Fediverse is stepping up to decentralise and democratise social media - and bringing it out of the shadow of US tech behemoths. #fosdem

@fosdem as is tradition: the photo from the closing talk of #FOSDEM

Of note:
* Next year, the default network of #FOSDEM will be #IPv6 only. At lot of things will break, and this is intentional
* FOSDEM will become political. If you are in policy, politics, a position of power: reach out to us at policy@fosdem.org

#Accessibility matters ... #fosdem please support cash too

@benpate
The @HolosSocial project i mentioned after Your talk at #Fosdem does implement the e2ee with the signal protocol:
https://mastodon.social/@HolosSocial/115986023918493823
Maybe they are interested in collaboration on the e2ee activities.
@ramsey

RE: https://social.wake.st/@liaizon/115989067770322256

Start here to follow the official Social Web Devroom liveblog, post-by-post #FOSDEM

@fosdem and we're truly and really done.

In two weeks, most of us will be back for the post mortem.

#FOSDEM

On my way back from #FOSDEM I came up with an idea.

When are we going to replace Amazon?

I put together some ideas in a blog post. I think it's feasible.

https://blog.bustikiller.com/2026/02/01/when-are-we-going-to-replace-amazon.html

#Amazon #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #FOSS #local #federation #commerce

On our way home from #FOSDEM. Met so many amazing people form the #fediverse community. Thanks to everyone for the discussions on events federation and more. @linos @Bonfire @mayel @ivan @liaizon @lesion @michael the folks from Mobilizion and anyone I forgot.

Better to make clear messages clearer

#FOSDEM

As seen at #FOSDEM, a Mastodon API tool that splits long posts into a thread. I’m just sad the logo isn’t a ninja sewer rat.

https://splinter.hastily.cc

#OpenSocial

FOSDEM has already started sharing video recordings!

https://video.fosdem.org/2026/

They're grouped by room. It's a massive task, so they're not done yet (FOSDEM is still ongoing as I'm typing this 😉).

Also, you'll want the webm version, not mp4 (unless your device can't use the webm version).

And they have generated captions! While not perfect, they're better than nothing at all. They can help with accessibility, and they're useful for grabbing the text of a talk.

https://video.fosdem.org/2026/FAQ.txt

#fosdem

I definitely crashed hard when I sat down on the bed for a bit to “rest” and then woke up a couple of hours later. 😅 I'll take that as a hint that I should actually go to bed so I make my morning flight.

Thanks everyone for a great time at FOSDEM! I had a blast chatting with everyone about GNOME, ROOST, and open source. ✌️

#FOSDEM #FOSDEM2026 #FOSDEM26

Everyone talks about #fosdem flu but perhaps the actual problem is the bad ventilation at Delirium

If you take just one thing away from #FOSDEM this is it.
👇🏽
“If we lose our democracies, Open Source is irrelevant and goes away”

or putting it another way:

If we don’t apply, enforce, adopt and embrace Open Source in our public and government institutions we risk to lose our democracies.
#OpenSource #SaveDemocracy
Boost if you agree!
👍🏾

@mania @jamesbelchamber While I would have loved having a nap due to a temporary issue at home, I don't see the point coming to #fosdem to have a nap, I'd rather stay home for that.

Random #fosdem notes. Met a nice dev from @ente #ente with whom I discussed a subtle bug on GitHub a few weeks ago (thanks for the now released fix!). Also met @liaizon. Thanks for reaching out; it's always cool to discuss the integration #activitypub in wikis!